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Tag Archives: Giant Slayer

Another trio of early-90’s Slayers today. Not a lot to write about these guys as we’ve seen others of their ilk before quite a few times by now. These three have been painted with paler, more faded – slightly pastel even rather than “natural” – hair.

A couple of different tones of blue for the stripey trousers, but both wearing the traditional style. Once again, I think the tattoos turned out well.

I really need to get the final batch of these guys stripped so I can start painting them. I’ve still got the commanders to complete, as well as a small selection of LE figures from Citadel and metals from other sources like AoW and Mantic. And then there’s the plastics. And the Fyreslayers…

Following up on the group shots I’ve been doing of some of my models recently, here’s one of the Marauder Miniatures Dwarf Slayers that I’ve painted. I think they come up nicely as a group, actually, despite the goofiness that some of them have. I’ll do another group shot of the Citadel Giant Slayers sometime down the line – after I’ve finished all of them, so don’t hold your breath for it right now…

Here’s the full range on release, which I am missing three models from. Of course, there’s also a variation on one of these guys, plus a scattered few from other Marauder Ranges, and then an expanded but separate range of MM Troll Slayers. While I’d really like to get the missing three (and every other Citadel and Marauder Slayer model that I don’t own), I’m not going to kill myself over it, instead I’ll keep an eye out on eBay for them at reasonable prices. Wish me luck!

The most striking thing to me from these two side-by-side pictures is that my models come up pretty nicely against the “official” ones here. Not too shabby. 🙂

Taking a bit of a respite today from the 40k-centric series of posts that have dominated the blog for the past few weeks, we’ve got a fantasy post again, dealing with some more classic models.

Ahh… the 1990’s. Those were the heady days. When Games Workshop decided to split up the three figures in their command blisters so that they could sell you the unit champion separately. Making their first catalogue appearance in 1998, quite a few years after the majority of the range were out, are the first of Citadel’s Slayer Command pairs. Interestingly, they’re labelled “Troll Slayer Command” rather than “Giant Slayer” (which these particular figures fit far more closely). Either way, I was well gone from WHFB by that point in time, due to the Herohammer that it had become.

I got all of my metal slayers secondhand via eBay relatively recently, as I had pretty much stopped buying fantasy models by then, so that wasn’t a huge hassle for me personally, but even then it didn’t endear the company to me. Despite the number of Slayers that I’ve got and have been painting, I had a bit of a block when it came to the command groups (yes, there’s another one still WIP on my painting desk). That block was the standard bearer. While the horn-blower looks rather goofy, the standard bearer conversely looks quite good, but with a rather oddly-shaped standard that frankly demanded a flag, or something. Problem was the standard top shape isn’t exactly conducive to hanging a good banner, what with the troll head up there. (And is it supposed to be an actual troll head, or a metal casting, or… ?)

So these figures had been sitting on my desk annoying me, and silently taunting me to get them finished since I started painting my slayers over a year ago. But that bloody standard! Eventually, I was doing a google image search and saw …someone’s kitbash of a similar figure. They’d glued some of the extra standard bearer junk found on the various plastic Dwarf kit sprues to the thing. And it looked bloody good!

So I dug out my box of Dwarf Sprues that I purchased from Damo/Nerdfest last year and had a look through, and found the book-and-shield shown above, as well as a winged shield with crossed axe device. With an insignificant amount of carving, both were now mounted on my two standards, and this one made it to completion. The other one will be along presently. After I complete it…

Having finished the last of the Marauder Slayers the other day, we move to another pair of the Citadel Giant Slayers.

This pair has gotten a slightly more natural shade of orange for their hair than many of the others. Whether they used a different dye or theirs has simply washed out somewhat, when mixed into the units, they’ll help to offer some variance while still maintaining the visual coherency with the others.

As with the last half-dozen or so slayers that I’ve finished, I’ve attempted to again vary the stripey trouser just slightly from the neverending run of identical blue stripes. Clearly not by a lot, but again it’s simply about adding a little bit of variation into the unit so they still look like a unit but not entirely homogenised and uniform. They’re not a freshly-raised unit of Napoleonic Chasseurs, after all.

I’m quite pleased with how the tattoos came out on this pair as well. That’s one thing that this project has really helped me with. Well, two. I can now paint many variations of orange-to-ginger hair pretty much with my eyes closed. I’ll have some command guys photographed and posted hopefully within a few days, and then I need to start getting some group shots of the Slayers (and Vikings, and others) taken and posted!

I have been going back and forth between Dwarves and Orcs a bit over the past couple of months. Well, rather than break that pattern, I’m going to continue with it while I get a bunch of models on my desk completed. Hopefully without adding too many more to the queue.

I recently decided to dig out all of my metal Slayers with the intent on working my way through them. In that batch are a pile more of the mid-90’s range, as well as a bunch from the Marauder range.

The Original Troll Slayer “Wild Nyjhul”

I was never a big fan of the Marauder Slayers. They were just a bit random for my taste, and a bit cartoony to boot. While the Slayer look wasn’t as fully defined at that stage, the archetype that will always work for me is “Wild Nyjhul”. The Marauder Slayers were overall a bit far from that.

WD scan via Stuff of Legends

I don’t think the painted examples helped too much either (grey beards and orange hair just looked – and still looks – odd). Finally, I just didn’t like the Morrison’s Dwarf sculpts as much as I did the Perry’s. Some of their other Dwarves are very fine, but their Slayers just aren’t as good. Citadel’s Dwarves have always had wonky proportions, but the Marauder Slayers were overall a step a little too far towards them just being heads with arms and legs attached.

Now that I’ve spent the last 5 minutes slagging them off. The act of painting them has warmed me to these models a bit. I also like the fact that they’re not all armed with the typical axes. After all, Dishonoured Dwarves would have come from a variety of walks of Dwarven life, and so I see the other weapons mixed in – particularly the swords – as a reflection of that. Particularly for the (let’s face it) less impressive models like the Marauder models that can be viewed as representing Dwarves who have more recently taken the Slayer’s Oath.

I’ve included a bonus shot of the naked slayer, to show off his dragon tattoo. I think I may have to go back over it with the blue to redefine it though. The thin layer of flesh to embed the tattoo “into his skin” seems to have worked a little too well…

For the wounded slayer, I considered adding fresh blood to his wrappings after varnishing the models. I decided against it, instead going for more of a dried blood stain on them than a monents-fresh set of wounds. Think David Wenham in 300.

I decided on a group shot of all my currently-finished Slayers, to see how they looked together. Also including the rebased-on-32mm Stonehaven Dwarf Berserker, who I think looks much better on the larger base.

Then while putting them all back onto the shelf with the new three, I noticed that I actually had enough for a complete KoW regiment, plus the two heroes on their 32mm bases. So, having accidentally achieved Numberwang, I took them down again and mounted them on a unit base and took a couple more photographs. They’re guaranteed to be juggled around as I complete more of the metals. The later Giant Slayers will be condensed into their own regiment along with standards and musicians, while the smaller models – Troll Slayers as well as the Marauder and older Citadel models will end up on their own regiment base. But for now, they’re ready to kick some arse as a single unit!

While working on the Giant Slayers a few months ago, I ended up with quite a few metal slayers on my desk. With many models, especially those that I don’t plan to paint in large batches of cloned models like skeletons or bunches of plastic rank & file. These guys – the Troll slayers were the second batch to be finished. I’ve got another half-dozen partly-done/barely started slayers on the bench to work through, so I’m sure they’ll get back into the queue. Probably after I finish the dozen Vikings I’m working on – I’ll have the first few of those to show off shortly.

These guys were a lot of fun to paint, but they also managed to cockblock me for a good month or more. Probably closer to two months. The issue was working out the tattoos. Yeah, I know. The thing is that I really wanted them to look “legit”, so it took me ages to come up with designs that I was happy with. The runes in the back tattoo read in Dwarvish, while the ᛟ (Othal) rune on the shoulder is a rune that denotes “Odin”.

It actually seems quite difficult to find Troll Slayers – as opposed to Giant/Daemon/Dragon Slayers – which strikes me as a bit odd. I didn’t note the dates on the tabs of these guys before I started them. I just assumed that they were from the same era as the pile of Giant Slayers (’93-4) but looking through the catalogues on SoL it seems that GW used the Marauder sculpts for a solid decade or more. I only spotted these guys in tiny pictures inside the awful US “catalogues” from the mid-2000’s stuffed into painted units.

My growing gang of Dwarven Slayers

These guys will eventually make up a full unit, but I’m doing these guys very much piecemeal – so it’ll be a while before there’s a full unit of these guys done.

Still doing some Dwarves mixed in with everything else at the moment. I’ve managed to finish this guy off a few days ago.

Dwarf Daemon Slayer

I bought this one along with most of the other metal slayers from eBay a year or so ago, and started him as I was finishing off the first batch that I showed off a week ago. I’m not entirely sure who sculpted him, or his compatriots as he was released after Citadel stopped crediting their sculptors properly and everything became the work of “The Citadel Design Team”. Probably Colin Dixon, since he did many of the post-Perry Dwarves of that era.

Tartan Pants turned out okay, but not perfect.

Much like most of his fellows, I was never fond of this model, as his hair is… ridiculous. A little less ridiculous that most of the Giant Slayers, I guess – as a tall, thin-crested mohawk like this one could exist much more easily than the multi-lane models sported by the Giant Slayers. I’m okay with his tartan pants, but in retrospect, I should have gone with blue, not red as there’s not the colour differentiation that I would have liked. Even allowing for the fact that they’re a little more defined in person. Ah well, I ain’t repainting him!

The Gems on the other hand worked well.

Initially I had him based on a 25mm round, like his cohorts but then decided that he was a little big for it. Since I have a pile of 32mm bases, and I don’t need to worry about WHFB and don’t care what Mantic says about square bases for heroes in KoW (who have no facing anyway) I went with one of the bigger bases. The fact that it makes it a little more SAGA or AoS-friendly is simply by the by.

Close-up of some of his tattoos.

Since this guy is an older veteran of many more campaigns, I tatt’ed him up more heavily than the Giant Slayers. Work on both arms, his back, and (only) one side of his face. Conversely, when I get the Troll Slayers done, they might only have shoulders and maybe some back work done, rather than the number on this guy’s arms of the single sleeves that most of the Giant Slayers have.

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Photobucket Image Apocalypse:

Just a quick note to let visitors to my blog know that I am working my way backwards through the blog, repairing the image links that Photobucket cut off in their attempt to self-immolate their business. It’ll take some time, but it’ll get done.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Update: Posts fixed back to 25th Sept, 2016 – Yay, over a full year of posts are intact again!

(and quite a few older posts beyond that, though not in any special sequence!)

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